Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice as well as his serio-comic performances in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.[1]

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Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, youngest of the four children of Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., president of the National Candy Company, and his wife Marguerite Cobb Wilcox.[2][1] His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder," the first cream of tartar baking powder,[3] and secured the family's fortune.[4]

In the 1950s, Price moved into horror films, with a role in House of Wax (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office. His next roles were The Mad Magician (1954), the monster movie The Fly (1958) and its sequel Return of the Fly (1959). That same year, he starred in a pair of beloved thrillers by producer-director William Castle: House on Haunted Hill (1959) as eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren, and The Tingler as Dr. Warren Chapin, who discovered the titular creature. He also appeared to great effect in the radio drama "Three Skeleton Key," the story of an island lighthouse besieged by an army of rats. He first performed the work in 1950 on Escape and returned to it in 1956 and 1958 for Suspense.[8]

In the 1955–1956 television season, he was cast three times on the religion anthology series Crossroads, a study of clergymen from different denominations. In the 1955 episode "Cleanup", Price portrayed the Reverend Robert Russell. In 1956, he was cast as RabbiGershom Mendes Seixas in "The Rebel" and as the Reverend Alfred W. Price in "God's Healing".[9]

Price often spoke of his pleasure at playing Egghead in the Batman television series. One of his co-stars, Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), said Price was her favorite villain in the series. In an often-repeated anecdote from the set of Batman, Price, after a take was printed, started throwing eggs at series stars Adam West and Burt Ward, and when asked to stop, replied, "With a full artillery? Not a chance!", causing an egg fight to erupt on the soundstage. This incident is reenacted in the behind-the-scenes telefilm Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt. In the 1960s, he began his role as a guest on the game show Hollywood Squares, even becoming a semi-regular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980.[13] He was known for usually making fun of Rose Marie's age (even though she was a dozen years younger than Price), and using his famous voice to answer questions in a playfully menacing tone.

From 1962 to 1971, Sears-Roebuck offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art," selling about 50,000 pieces of fine art prints to the general public. Price selected and commissioned works for the collection, including works by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí.[15][16]

Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture.[18] Price's voiceover is heard on Alice Cooper's first solo album, Welcome to My Nightmare from 1975, and he also appeared in the corresponding TV special Alice Cooper: The Nightmare. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in a syndicated daily radio program, Tales of the Unexplained. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of Here's Lucy showcasing his art expertise and in a 1972 episode of ABC's The Brady Bunch, in which he played a deranged archaeologist.

In the spring of 1976, Price recorded a 45rpm single, a cover of Bobby "Boris" Pickett's, "The Monster Mash", putting his voice to a backing track laid down in London by two record producers, Bob Newby and Ken Weston. It was released on both sides of the Atlantic later that year without much success, but it is believed that his performance inspired Michael Jackson to use his voice on Thriller.[citation needed] In October 1976, Price appeared as the featured guest in an episode of The Muppet Show.

In the summer of 1977, he began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play Diversions and Delights written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy. The play is set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. The original tour of the play was a success in every city it played except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed the role of Wilde at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado, on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. Price would eventually perform the play worldwide. In her biography of her father, Victoria Price stated that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was his best acting performance.[4] In the spring of 1979, Price starred with his wife Coral Browne in the short-lived CBS TV series Time Express. In 1979, Price hosted the hour-long amusement park & roller coaster television special "America Screams", syndicated world-wide, riding on many of the roller coasters himself and recounting their history.

A witty raconteur, Price was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, where he once demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher. Price was a noted gourmet cook and art collector. He also authored several cookbooks, in particular A Treasury of Great Recipes (with his second wife), and hosted a cookery TV show, Cooking Pricewise.

Price married three times. His first marriage with former actress Edith Barrett produced his only son, Vincent Barrett Price. Price later married Mary Grant Price, and they had a daughter, Mary Victoria Price, on April 27, 1962.[21] She was named Victoria after Price's first major success in the play Victoria Regina.[22] Together, Price and Mary Grant Price donated hundreds of works of art and a large amount of money to East Los Angeles College in the early 1960s in order to endow the Vincent Price Art Museum there.[23] Price's last marriage was to the Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in Theatre of Blood (1973). He converted to Catholicism to marry her, and she became a U.S. citizen for him.

Price, who studied Art History (along with English) at Yale, was a noted art lover and collector. In addition to establishing the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College.[6] Price also spent time working as an art consultant for Sears in the early 1960s.[6] Public access to fine art was important to Price, who, according to his daughter, Victoria, saw the Sears deal as an "opportunity to put his populist beliefs into practice, to bring art to the American public."[24]

One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an episode of The Saint titled "Author of Murder,"[25] which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950.[26] Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and claimed Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies.[27] Price was later appointed to the Indian Arts and Crafts Board under the Dwight D. Eisenhower Administration; he called the appointment "kind of a surprise, since I am a Democrat."[28]

In 1957, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Price and Browne donated 90 pieces from their private collection to establish the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, which was the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the United States. Price and Browne ultimately donated some 2000 pieces; the collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of $5 million.[30]

Price himself amassed a large and extensive range of art, and in 2008, a painting bought for $25 by a couple from Dallas, Texas was identified as a piece from Price's collection. Painted by leading Australian modernist Grace Cossington Smith it was given a modern valuation of AU$45,000. It is thought that Price's Australian-born wife Coral may have known the Australian painter's work, and that the appearance of coral in the painting might have attracted Price to it. [31]

From 1962 to 1971, Sears-Roebuck offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 pieces of fine art to the general public. Works which Price selected or commissioned for the collection included works by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, and Salvador Dalí.[32][33]

The A&E Network aired an episode of Biography the night following Price's death, highlighting his horror film career, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E produced its updated episode, a show titled Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain, which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of The Complete Films of Vincent Price.[34] In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title Conversations with Vincent, in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.[35]

Director Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called Vincent, about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who is obsessed with the grim and macabre. It is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on Sesame Street. He was parodied in an episode of The Simpsons ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price even had his own Spitting Image puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws. The October 2005 episode of the Channel 101 series Yacht Rock featured comedian James Adomian as Vincent Price during the recording of Michael Jackson's "Thriller." Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show Saturday Night Live has played Price in a recurring sketch where Vincent Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s and '60s. Other cast members who have played Price on SNL include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season 10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).

In 1999, a frank and detailed biography about Price written by his daughter, Victoria, was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th Birthday.[37] It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.[38][39]